Over the years, insects have been a major cause of irritation to certain domestic animals. Flies are especially troublesome insects because they are attracted by tears. Tears flow down an animal's face from the eyes, and the flies climb or walk up the animal's face on the resulting tear path to the animal's eyes. As a minimum, the flies can cause discomfort: to the animal. More critically, the flies cause infection in and around the eye region of the animal.
In order to protect a domestic animal's eyes from insects, different types of protective devices have been developed. Many of the known prior art devices include some strap arrangement for securing a mask or protective article to an animal's head. The straps are cinched tight about the animal's face to prevent insects from crawling beneath the mask. Unfortunately, the tight strap arrangement can cause discomfort and abrasions to the animal in the area where the strap is tight against the animal's face. Furthermore, the tight strap causes hairs to abrade off or turn white, and may cause scar tissue formation. This is particularly true around a horse's nose and is a highly undesirable disfigurement on a valuable show, race, or breeding horse.
In addition, several prior art devices include cutout portions with either screen or some other material fastened to the body of the mask at the cutout portions. The assembly of such prior art devices requires an undesirably large number of seams. Seams are undesirable because they are potential frictional elements for further irritating the animal's skin. Where seams rub on an animal's skin or hair, abraded areas result. Flies may deposit eggs which hatch into fly larvae, known as maggots, in the abraded areas or in any untreated cut. The maggots then live in the abraded or cut areas and cause more serious lesions, infections, and scarring.
One prior art device includes a protective mask for an animal that is made of a continuous one piece screen which covers the eyes and adjacent facial areas of the animal with a single cutout through which the ears and forelock protrude. The protective mask is configured to encircle the bridge of the nose in a relatively straight line, then angle back along the sides of the animal's muzzle to an attachment point beneath the animal's jaw. Relative to an animal's head, the mask has darts extending from a location below each ear to a location proximate each eye, to shape the mask, and has a hook and loop type fastener underneath the head. There is a plush trim around the muzzle area for added comfort and to prevent the flies from crawling beneath the mask along the tear path. In addition, there is plush trim around the single ear cutout for comfort and to prevent the flies from crawling beneath the mask from the ear cutout.
The one piece screen of the prior art device decreases the risk of irritation caused by seams. Unfortunately though, the shape and the positioning of the screen causes excessive pressure across the bridge of the nose and along the sides of the muzzle. In addition, the lower edge of the mask has a tendency to roll up on the nose toward the eyes to further exacerbate the pressure problems. While this protective mask includes the plush trim to mitigate some of the pressure problems, the plush trim has a tendency to collect an excessive amount of debris along the seam between the plush trim and the one piece screen. This excessive debris results in a protective mask that is more difficult to keep clean. Moreover, the single cutout for ears and forelock results in a bigger region through which flies may enter to crawl under the mask.
Another prior art device is a insect control device formed from a single piece of material and having a pair of openings for the ears to protrude. One of the ear openings has hook and loop fasteners so that the opening is adjustable. Thus, the two ear opening configuration and adjustable fit around the ears allows this insect control device to more snugly fit around the ears to prevent flies from crawling under the insect control device through the ear openings. Unfortunately, this insect control device rests against a horse's forelock. It should be noted that the insect control device is more often needed in the summer because flies are much more prevalent in the heat of the summer. Accordingly, extra discomfort results when the forelock is trapped beneath the device from the pressure of the insect control device and heat buildup underneath the forelock.
Like the previously described protective mask, this insect control device is also configured to encircle the bridge of the nose in a relatively straight line, then angle back along the sides of the animal's muzzle to hook and loop fasteners beneath the animal's jaw. Accordingly, this device suffers from the problems of excessive pressure and from the material rolling on the bridge of the nose.
This prior art insect control device does not employ the use of plush trim around the ear openings and the muzzle area. Accordingly, this prior art device avoids the problems of debris collection in the plush trim as discussed in connection with the previously discussed protective mask. Rather, this insect control device includes neoprene material trim on all edges to maintain the shape of the device and to provide a slug fit. Unfortunately, neoprene cannot breathe. In other words, air and moisture cannot easily pass through the neoprene material. Thus, heat buildup causes sweating in the contact area between the animal's skin that does not readily evaporate off of the animal. This trapped moisture causes further irritation to the animal's skin. It would be highly advantageous therefore to remedy the foregoing and other deficiencies inherent in the prior art.